Research Articles

Famine, the Black Death, and health in fourteenth-century London

Authors:

Daniel Antoine,

UCL Institute of Archaeology, GB

Simon Hillson

UCL Institute of Archaeology, GB

Abstract

In the first half of the fourteenth century two catastrophes struck the population of Europe: the Great Famine and the Black Death. The latter has been extensively studied, but much less is known about the biological effects of the Great Famine. A large assemblage of skeletal remains from one of the Black Death burial grounds, the Royal Mint cemetery in London, provides a unique opportunity to investigate these effects by analyzing the teeth of individuals who survived the famine but died during the Black Death.